B&NES selling off our city’s heritage

Once again short-termism rules in the Guildhall (£8m sale of public assets has gone on redundancies, 7 March 2019).

At what point did we, the electorate of B&NES, agree to sell-off 19 of our public spaces and places into private hands?

These include special, historically important places like Locksbrook and Twerton cemetery houses. Why don’t we know who bought them and for how much? Once these have gone, we have lost them forever.

It is a basic duty of care to its citizens for our council to protect and nurture our assets, not sell them off at the expense of future generations.

That councils are facing harsh spending cuts is not news. Nonetheless selling things off will not plug the gap, it will simply hasten an overall civic decline.

Assets are called assets because they useful, valuable and a resource for all. With proper, open consultation there might have been creative and collaborative communitybased solutions to both increase or maintain revenue and keep them in public hands, not to mention help to prevent redundancies (people are assets too).

This is just another example of obfuscation and secrecy about how our community is governed. It’s time we opened up council processes to proper public scrutiny.

This feels more urgent than ever if our assets are being sold, quite literally from under our feet.

Molly Conisbee

By email